My journey through the RPGs of the original Playstation has finally brought me to Guardian's Crusade. One of the things the Playstation was most known for in the late 90s was finally bringing the RPG into the mainstream. They were able to turn the new Final Fantasy games into events which is no small feat considering that about half of them were skipped over in the U.S due to lack of interest. The better marketing and more powerful graphics made even smaller companies want to get into the RPG business and for the first time a console was over saturated with RPGs. Consoles in the US rarely had more than 20. The Playstation, however, featured nearly 80. Because of this even someone obsessed with the genre who constantly read gaming magazines during the late 90s was bound to miss a few. That's why it took me so many years to stumble upon Guardian's Crusade which has to be one of the most obscure RPGs on the system.
(High definition graphics: 90s style)
It is always exciting when I can find an old RPG that is both unusual and cheap, and this one just about drowns itself in unusual. The influence of Pokemon shows up very quickly. Luckily I never get tired of collecting cute creatures. This one had to go and be awkward about it though. The main gimmick is that you go around collecting living toys which aide you both in and out of battle. There are 70 of them in all, so you can probably imagine that some of them are going to be completely useless. What do you need in a game like this? You need things that attack and things that heal. Status effects are usually fairly useless because they take up a round that you can spend attacking. They probably could've gotten by with having about ten and letting you level them up. Instead we get about 30 that will never get used. One of them only does play-by-play of the battle. This might be fun if not for the fact that all he does is repeat what is already written in the text box with a "congratulations" at the end. At least they spelled it correctly. I imagine they were a lot of fun to design though, and if the only problem with this game was that it had too many goofy battle toys than it might be a lost classic. Unfortunately it just misses the mark thanks to some other issues.
(Our heroes)
The main problem with this game has to do with the two most important parts of any RPG, the characters and the story. There are only two party members and only one that the player is in direct control of. This is annoying because anytime you want to use an item or call out a living toy you can't use your main attacker. This makes using living toys in the first half of the game almost pointless. The monsters are fairly easy in the beginning and don't usually take too many hits so you're better off attacking by yourself. The two characters, a young knight and his baby dragon pal, are creatively named Knight and Baby. That right there is a perfect example of how generic the game's story is. You go on a journey to save the world which features one betrayal, one boss who turns out not to be the big boss, a late quest to find special armor, and a boss that goes through a couple forms before it is dead. This is basically the plot of every RPG without the interesting bits and character interactions.
(Look how skinny that thing's neck is. Seriously, how does it eat with a neck like that?)
This is also one of those games that is so easy that I played it wrong right up to the end and didn't even notice. As I said earlier, Baby is not a controllable character. He is, however, supposed to be cared for or else he starts acting irresponsibly and attacking you during battle. You have to take care of him by giving him treats and playing fetch with him. Being the notorious instruction skipper that I am I had no idea I was supposed to do this. I just figured he attacked me sometimes because he was stupid. I didn't find out until I was going to fight the final boss that I was actually supposed to be caring for him and feeding him weapons and armor. If you do this his stats will grow. This also explains why I had so much money near the end of the game. I should've been spending it on treats and equipment. However, even though I never even so much as patted him on the head I had no trouble killing just about everyone. I only died permanently in battle once and after I gained a few more levels nothing really threatened me. It's never a good sign when a person can miss one of the main mechanisms in the game and not even suffer any ill effects. I certainly haven't learned my lesson and I will keep skipping the instructions. Who's got time for that sort of thing?
(My wife appreciated the Monty Python reference)
Playing this game was one of those situations where I had to question my own motivations. It is a bad game, and yet I enjoyed playing it. Does that make me a bad person? I have always talked about how I will play any RPG out there and get some enjoyment out of it. This certainly fits the bill of bottom rung RPG that should only be enjoyed by crazy people like me. At least it is colorful and funny. It doesn't go for bleak and muted like so many other games did. I will see if Nester's RPG Rule holds up if I am able to stay awake long enough while playing Eternal Eyes to actually beat it. Until then I am ranking this at the bottom of the Playstation RPG heap. Of course I still have about 60 to play through so I might change my mind. Hopefully I'm not quite as crazy as I think I am.
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